Category Archives: local news

local news

Parks may define city’s ID

Six years living in Princeton, Texas, and I still am trying to find the “thing” that makes this city so attractive to newcomers.

I learned this week, for example, that the city estimates its population at around 43,000 residents based on the number of registered water meters in operation. The number comes from City Manager Mike Mashburn, who I am going to presume knows these things quite well.

Still, the figure astounds me. The population sign read 6,807 when my wife and I moved here in February 2019. The 2020 Census boosted the figure to 17,027 residents. Now it’s well north of 40 grand? Holy cow!

What kind of identity is the city forming? Mashburn believes it is going to come in the development of its park system. He knows about that direction of growth, too. He came here a year ago after serving as an assistant city manager in Farmers Branch, where he specialized in park development.

Princeton voters in November 2023 approved a $109 million bond issue to develop parks, green space and recreational opportunites for the exploding population that continues to pour into the city. I supported the bond issue, as I believe parks and green space are important places for residents to escape the tribulations of busy lives.

The city has embarked on several park projects, one of them happens to be quite close to my home. The JJ Book Wilson Park is being expanded along Beauchamp Boulevard to include a skate park, playground, trails and water recreation. That’s just one.

Mashburn apparently believes that enhanced park development can become a key part of Princeton’s effort to establish its identity, making the city a place that attracts people for a specific reason. That is not a bad call at all.

Therefore, Princeton’s evolution from tiny burg along the longest continual U.S. highway in Texas, to a city of signifcance is continuing. If park development is the catalyst, how in the world can we be critical of more green space for residents and their children and grandchildren to relax?

local news

This news hurts … seriously

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I am at the age of my life where I spend time looking at obituaries … just to see which of my friends and acquaintances have gone on to reap their great reward.

I did so again today — and got the shock of my life!

Inside the obituary page of the Amarillo Globe-News was news that a former marketing director for the newspaper had died at age 65. Her name was Jo Tyler Bagwell.

Jo was not famous outside of Amarillo — or Claude, where she grew up and attended high school. However, this woman was a force of nature. I first made her acquaintance when she worked in the marketing department of a local bank; I met her a day or two after I moved to Amarillo in January 1995 to start my job at the Globe-News. We hit it off immediately.

I want to pay a brief tribute to this woman because she was, to borrow a phrase, the “complete package.” She was physically attractive, but she also was a kind, generous, gregarious, charming, smart individual. She was a devoted Aggie.

Above and beyond all of that, she was a proud and devoted mother to her son, Blake, who many of us watched grow into a wonderful man.

I once told Jo that she was an angel put on Earth by God to care for Blake, who was born with myriad challenges, but who overcame them to blossom into the fine man he has become. He owes everything to his mother.

Many years have passed since I last spoke with Jo Bagwell. She struggled through the last stages of her life on Earth. I am saddened beyond every emotion I can summon at the news I saw today. At my age of 75 I am going to keep looking at obituaries to keep up with the rite of passage we all must face eventually.

Damn, I do not want to be surprised soon in the manner this news hit me like a punch in the gut.

local news

Worst day spawns new life

The worst day of my life befell my family and me two years ago today.

My beloved bride, Kathy Anne, lost her battle with glioblastoma. Fifty-one years with this wonderful woman could not have been more glorious, adventuresome and thrilling as we watched our sons grow into the two finest men you’ll ever know. We also watched our granddaughter come into this world and she, too, is growing into a delightful young lady.

I am not going to dwell, though, on the sorrow. I am going to deal briefly with the journey I have taken on my way out of the darkness.

I took that journey largely on instruction from my bride, who told me that if she were to go first that she wanted me — she insisted on it — to find happiness. Do not wallow in grief, she said. Kathy Anne was a woman of conviction, which told me she meant what she said.

My life is still under reconstruction. I don’t know when I’ll be able to declare that my task is complete. Maybe it’ll never be done completely. Whatever. I am ready for whatever comes my way.

She prepared me well for this kind of journey. For that preparation I will be in her debt forever.

Every single person I have met, or will meet along the rest of this trek will know that I miss her. I just intend to tell the whole world, though, that despite her absence I will live every day as if it’s my final day on this good Earth.

That is my bride’s legacy.

local news

P.S.: Here’s how I knew I had licked it

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A brief post script is in order after I posted a blog item detailing how I quit smokint cigarettes cold turkey on Feb. 2, 1980. Here goes.

My father died in a boating accident in September 1980. We were shocked beyond all we could measure. The accident occurred in Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada. Two passengers of the boat died that evening: Dad and the owner of the boat; two others, friends of Dad, survived.

They recovered the remains of the driver of the boat that evening. Dad remained MIA. So, the owner of the company for which Dad worked arranged to fly me to Gibsons to stand by while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched for Dad’s remains.

I arrived at the camp where Dad had been staying and we were joined by some loggers who worked on other side of the inlet. We were served some stew that night for dinner.

Then the loggers began pouring the booze. We talked about Dad. One of the loggers paid me a nice compliment by telling me I had “guts” to come there. He also regaled me with his distate for French-Canadians; hey, I knew all about the regional distate between easteern and western Canadians.

They got me sh**-stinking drunk that night. I was wasted beyond belief. I could’ve lit up a smoke that night.,

But I didn’t!

I got through the bender beyond belief. I turned in for the night. I woke the next morning and then returned home to Portland.

I thanked my new friends for taking good care of me.

One more point: The Mounties didn’t find Dad’s remains while I was there. They recovered Dad a few days later.

This much I knew, which was that if I could endure the body-numbing pain of the loss we had suffered without lighting up … I was home free.

local news

City manager residence at issue

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City managers are responsible for a lot of things emanating from City Hall … such as taxes that they propose for city residents to pay for municipal services.

It always has struck me that the individual who proposes a specific tax burden for residents in their city should have to shoulder part of that burden himself or herself.

Here in Princeton, where I have lived for six years, that’s not the case. The city hired a young man, Mike Mashburn, as its city manager in 2024. He signed a hefty contract, then was given an extension and a raise shortly afteward.

He took the job without having to move to Princeton. The city charter, approved in 2023, doesn’t require that the city’s chief executive officer live inside city’s limits. Mashburn hasn’t made the move. A group of Princeton residents, though, want to amend the city charter to make in-city residency a requirement of City Hall’s top dog.

I have two thoughts on this idea. My first thought is that the City Council that sent the charter to a vote of residents should have written such a requirement into the document. I find it unconscionable that the city manager doesn’t share the burden he proposes for others.

My second thought is that since Mashburn is under contract he could sue the city for breaching that agreement if the cåharter amendment passes. Moreover … he well could win that lawsuit, which could cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in a settlement.

The mayor who engineered Mashburn’s hiring lost her re-election bid late in 2024. Brianna Chacon interviewed Mashburn and then presented him to the City Council, which then — after meeting him for the first time in closed session — voted unanimously to hire him.

The bottom line from my vantage point is that the City Council did not perform its due diligence by insisting that the city manager live in the city where he would work each day.

As for City Manager Mike Mashburn, he should sell his house and move here … pronto!

local news, medical news

Placebo effect takes hold … maybe

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Three weeks into a nutrition and health management program run by the Veterans Administration and I am going to issue a preliminary progress report.

I signed up for this program a few weeks ago because I determined I need professional help with shedding the weight I gained after I lost my bride, Kathy Anne, to brain cancer. I devoured far too much comfort food and I paid the price with a lot of excess weight.

The program I joined is 16 weeks long. We just finished the third week of lessons delivered via online connection to my laptop here in North Texas.

Have I lost significant amounts of weight? Am I now able to look at myself in the mirror? No on both counts. However, there must be some sort of placebo impact taking hold of me.

Why? I feel better. It’s tough to define. I am proud of myself that I am able to exhibit some long-lost dietary discipline. I am keep strict daily logs of the calories I consume and the calories I expend through exercise and, well, just moving around and about.

I have heard about docs prescribing placebo medication — which, of course, is fake — as a sort of disguise to determine whether a patient is really sick. I will consider this positive effect on my outlook as a form of placebo I am receiving from the dietitian I am meeting each week.

I know that Billy Crystal’s SNL character “Fernando” would say it is “better to look good than to feel good.” Baloney. I feel great. I’ll settle for that gladly as I continue along this journey.

economic news, local news

Princeton does the inevitable

Princeton’s City Council had no choice but to do what it did Monday night by extending the building moratorium it had placed on new single-family dwelling and apartment construction.

It voted to extend its four-month building ban another six months.

So, let’s see. That means it will be 10 months before the city could start issuing building permits on those types of dwellings. This is just me, but my gut tells me another extension could be in the deck of cards that council members would want to play.

Princeton’s population continues to explode, But ,.. wait! The city needs more police officers, more firefighters, more medical emergency personnel, better streets, more electric utilities, more natural gas lines.

Moreover, the city needs much more commercial development, which isn’t part of the public financing obligation associated with infrastructure development. That commercial development is on the verge of become a reality.

A Princeton resident told CBS News Texas Channel 11 last night that folks here have to go to places such as McKinney and Allen for entertainment or to just purchase needed goods and commodities.

Princeton has developed an ocean of single-family rooftops. That’s fine, but the strain on new residents’ tax obligation is more than many of the newbies would care to absorb.

The city has some catching-up to do and I’m not sure six months extra time is enough.

local news, political news, State news

Abortion to ‘challenge’ Texas Legislature?

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The headline atop the front page of the Dallas Morning News screamed out that the new Texas Legislature faces many “challenges” as it prepares to get to work on our behalf for the next five months.

One of them surely is going to be abortion and whether legislators are intent on banning all abortive procedures, all of ’em, making women, spouses and docs criminals.

Newly sworn in Rep. Brent Money, R-Greenville, says categorically that Texas must ban all abortion, citing what he said is “God’s creation” being sacred to merit legislation by mere mortal human beings. He appeared this morning on WFAA-TV’s “Inside Politics” program.

I will disagree with the gentleman. He doesn’t seem to take into account what happens to a child who is born with debilitating deformities. Who cannot care for herself or himself. Whose birth puts Mama’s health — and life — in jeopardy.

I offer those caveats as a pro-life Texas resident myself. I consider myself pro-life, however, I do not believe in legislating from afar whether a woman can take command of her own body or whether she must surrender her reproductive rights because some lawmaker in Austin forces her to do so.

Rep. Money is taking the seat once held by another right-wing extremist, Bryan Slaton, who was drummed out of the House because he got a female legislative staffer drunk as a skunk before having sex with her.

I am going out on a limb here, but I do not believe most Texans adhere to Money’s view that we need to ban all abortion, period.

There in could lie Texas lawmakers’ huge “challenge” as they prepare to convene their next session this week.

May the force of common sense and compassion be with all of them.

local news, media news

Remembering final big move

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Thirty years ago this week, I piled most of my worldly possessions into a 1987 Honda Civic and set out for what would be the final stop on my fun-filled career in print journalism.

I had spent nearly 11 years pursuing my craft in Beaumont, Texas, but then an opportunity presented itself in a community far from the Gulf Coast … but still part of this vast state of ours.

I moved to Amarillo. People have asked me over the years when I moved to the Panhandle, and I have been able to tell them the precise date. I reported for work at the Amarillo Globe-News on Jan. 9, 1995. I departed Beaumont on Jan. 6; it took a while to drive from the swamp to the High Plains.

I made one overnight stop in Fort Worth to see some dear friends before trudging northwest along U.S. 287.

But I got to Amarillo. I would learn later of a quip I adopted and have used many times: It is so flat in the Panhandle that if you stand on your tiptoes, you can see the back of your own head. 

It helps, too, that the region is so barren that there’s little tall timber to block that view.

The point of this brief blog? It’s to highlight the flexibility and adaptability I didn’t realize I possessed when I decided to move from my native Oregon to Texas in 1984.

They used to run a tourism ad that called Texas a “whole other country.” How true it is. Beaumont not only is a lengthy mileage distance from the Panhandle, the Gulf Coast possesses a whole other culture. Whereas the Panhandle prides itself on its cowboy tradition, the Golden Triangle takes pride in its Cajun southern culture. Both places appeal to me greatly.

Life took another huge turn in March 2013 when my granddaughter came into this world. My bride and I set about preparing to move from the Panhandle to the Metroplex. It took a while, but we got here.

I guess I want simply to salute the journey my career enabled me to take. Kathy Anne and I saw much of this country and a good part of world on that trek. Texas gave us the opportunity to live a wonderful life.

We have been blessed beyond all measure. My journey continues.

local news

New mayor pledges ‘transparency’

Stop me if you’ve heard this before … a new politician promises to bring transparency to a government he wants to lead, but then somehow falls short of delivering fully on the pledge.

Princeton’s new mayor, Eugene Escobar Jr., has said he wants to improve transparency at City Hall. OK, fine. The person he defeated in the December runoff, Mayor Brianna Chacon, made the same promise back when she first was elected to the office.

To my admittedly feeble eyes, Chacon fell a bit short of delivering the goods. I am going to cite the city’s hiring of Mike Mashburn as its city manager in early 2024. Chacon called it a “transparent” process … but it wasn’t.

I was covering the City Council meeting the night Mashburn got the nod. A lot of the run-up process caught me by surprise. Transparent? No.

Chacon had interviewed Mashburn, who was an assistant city manager in Farmers Branch. She was the primary interviewer. Chacon said she brought in some “key” department heads to talk to the young man.

Then, on the night of the council meeting, she introduced Mashburn to the council members. They were meeting him for the first time in executive — or closed — session. After visiting with the fellow for about an hour, they voted unanimously to hire him. Council then reconvened the open session and affirmed the decision with a unanimous vote.

I submit that Mashburn’s hiring was not a transparent process. It was shrouded in secrecy. If the new mayor is intent on improving transparency to city government, he can start with opening up the way the city hires its key management personnel.

The city manager is the only person the council hires. The manager is in charge of hiring everyone else. However, the mayor presides over the city government and he or she can set the transparency tone simply by insisting that these processes be conducted in full public view.

Princeton opened its new municipal complex touting its many windows as a symbol of transparency. Perhaps the new mayor can deliver on the symbolism.